


At a Minute's Notice

by eurodox59



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: (warning: Sole can be a pos), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, But mostly angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Humor, Minuteman!Sole, Panic Attacks, Reluctant Veteran, Tags will change as the story progresses, War Veteran!Sole Survivor, mind-control, psyker!Sole - Freeform, telepathy for fun and pleasure, there's also unreality here too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2018-10-29 23:43:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10864587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurodox59/pseuds/eurodox59
Summary: Lee turns her eyes towards the hill where they built the vault. Then, as though she’d laid eyes on a horrific abomination, she averts her gaze back down. Twenty three months. That’s all they’d had together, and those twenty three months were some of the best of her life.And now they’re gone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to dedicate this chapter to [Hoxadrine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoxadrine/works), without whose encouragement this chapter would have never come to light.

_Ruins of the Red Rocket Truck Stop_

She didn’t realize it then, but a little part of Lee died back in Alaska, when she landed her ass in the business of killing. It wasn’t the brutal, daily realities of being a soldier, or even the horrors of taking slaves in order to carry out long range hits. One day, she woke up safe, in a comfy bed, stateside. She woke up and realized that she hadn’t had a chat with Compassion in years. She shed a tear over it, just like how she’s shedding another one right now, and then she moves on.

It was a sign of the change in her, that thinking about day-to-day survival under the fascisti menace was more important than her morals. Or, well, guess that'd be her ethics now.

Lee turns her eyes towards the hill where they built the vault. Then, as though she’d laid eyes on a horrific abomination, she averts her gaze back down. Twenty three months. That’s all they’d had together, and those twenty three months were some of the best of her life.

And now they’re gone.

She’d come to realize, after three years at war, that she’d long ago reached a point where she grew numb to trauma. What she’s feeling now, however, is a bit more than just numbness. It’s… floaty. She’s feeling floaty, like that time she was arrested and offered her choice of either death or submission to the government.

She always was a survivalist.

But none of that really matters anymore, because in the end her grand reward for all her hard work, is nuclear desolation. A heavy sigh heaves a mountain’s weight off her chest. She’s gotten too old to be losing everything.

So she won’t. She won’t reach for anything, or anyone. It’s been over two centuries since they put her on ice. Shaun, her baby boy, is either dead or older than sin. Dutch, her husband, is dead. Boston looks deader than a doornail. Hell, if all she had was her eyeballs, she wouldn’t be amiss thinking that she’s the last living human on earth.

Except she isn’t. Codsworth, her robot butler, confirmed for her that humanity is still very much alive. Well, alive enough to try and scrap him. And if there’s people, well they’ve probably divvied themselves into two camps: parasitic raiders and normal folk doing whatever the hell it is they do for a living these days.

There is one other thing, though: something happened in that goddamn vault. Back when she threw herself at the door to try and get it open. It changed her— Lee struggles with herself. An old gripe that her abilities should be referred to as such and not by the more comic-book like _powers_ comes to the fore, and then dies altogether. Fuck it.

Whatever the hell happened when she threw herself at the door to her cryo-pod, it changed her powers. Un-did something that she put in place back when she was real little. Now her range, which used to extend from her home to about where she’s sitting, allows her to sense some kind of weird-ass group of brains sitting in the northern reaches of Lexington.

And between here and Lexington there’s a group of parasitic raiders and nearly defenseless settlers in Concord. Whoever holed them up in the Museum of Freedom made a great choice. Problem is that they just don’t have the numbers to push back the intruders. Their sniper-man stands on a balcony, firing away at all comers.

Lee can feel her stress rising. Some of it blows off in a nice sigh, but that’s not what gets her off her ass. What gets her feet moving, her hands searching for her newly-acquired gun, is an important thought. Perhaps the only important thought: maybe she can ask these wastelanders where she can get a cup of coffee.

* * *

_Ruins of the Museum of Freedom, Concord_

It's only when the dust clears over the squads of dead raiders and the one bigass death machine that Lee thinks to ask her self just what the hell she's gotten into. She feels her old monsters clamoring and clawing and gnawing their way through her carefully constructed walls, trying to seize control of her mind.

“Wow,” says the sniper-man as she walks back into the museum, “that, was really impressive. I’m just glad you’re on our side.” His interruption is a hell of a blessing. Lee reaches up using the arms of the new-to-her suit of Power Armor, and takes her helmet off.

“That’s impressive?” Lee asks. She pops a brow into her hairline for emphasis. Sniper-man gives her a look, narrow-eyed and taken aback, like she’s surprised him.

“Uh, yeah.” Sniper-man answers. “We’ve been holding out here for two days, and you just come in and mow them down. Pretty impressive if you ask me.”

Lee gives an exaggerated ‘ohhh’ of understanding. “I usually call that shooting straight. Hell, you might’ve done it too if your rifle there,” Lee points at his hand-cranked laser-contraption, “didn’t have such a low rate of fire.” 200 years ago she might've given a fuck about offending the people she just got done saving, but she had Dutch and Shaun back then. Now?

Now she has nothing.

This time, Sniper-man gives her a look of wide-eyed surprise. “Really?” He also takes exception to the quip about his gun, but is oddly understanding about it. In private, of course.

“My dear sir,” Lee responds as she leans in and looks him in the eye, “I did not see you miss a single shot.” A moment's breath, and she leans back. “That’s damn good shooting in my book. Plus, you said it yourself: you’ve been holding out for two days. Two. Days. Even if I had your rifle, I wouldn’t have lasted that long.”

Sniper-man looks doubtful as he responds. “Well alright, then. Anyway, I don’t think we got introduced earlier.” He sticks a hand out. “Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen.” Lee decides to not hide what she is. Except for the powers. That shit can go to hell.

“Captain Robert Lee Finch, U.S. Army, former.” Lee responds. She shakes Preston’s hand.

“U-S Army?” Preston asks.

Lee nods. “Yep. Near as I can understand it, I’ve been on ice—” a lot of brains in Lexington click at once, their thought, if it can be called that, is one of intense anger, “for the last two hundred years.”

“Two _hundred_ years?” Preston asks, wide-eyed. He then waves the thought away. “Nevermind. We can talk about that once we find a place to live.” Something in Mama Murphy’s unfathomable brain stirs at the idea of a place to live.

Lee reacts to that stirring by jumping on her answer. “There’s a bunch of pre-war houses up north of here, nestled away in a little neighborhood called Sanctuary Hills. I mean, they’re full of holes and shit but at least you won’t have to start from scratch.” Preston throws Mama Murphy a significant look. Mama Murphy nods in response. Lee is… more than a little lost between them, but she can—

Oh, fuck. She can _sense_ them. It used to be that she could tune out all brains so that she would only ever barely sense the physiological responses that bodies will have towards emotions via the spinal cord. Now with nothing more than a slight shift in her own mind, Lee can know every emotion in the emotional state of beings within her range. And _then_ some.

Ostracization, one of her older fears, drags a deep incision into her mind with foot-long claws. Lee adjusts, plasters a mask on top of the rising tide of fear over these changes. As an indirect result, her body influences her mind and makes it easier for her to stomp the fear into submission. With that out of the way, she resolves to find an outlet or a way to re-establish control over her powers.

Which is just as well, because having a plan helps her feel a lot better about what’s going on.

Lee sighs just as Preston turns back around to face her. “Well, where y’all headed?” she asks.

Preston opens his mouth to speak, but is interrupted by a sharp, intense voice. “No!” It’s the younger woman from his group. “No!” she repeats as she walks over to Preston. “This is bullshit! Don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s trying to trick us! There _is_ no sanctuary.”

One of the men, a burly fellow wearing overalls, responds before Lee can. “Now hold on a minute. We’re all in this together, right?” He looks for support from among his fellows. The only other man besides Preston is busy floor-gazing. Lee senses the heart-pains of loss weighing heavily on his shoulders. The same kind of loss that burns the younger woman up as well, now that Lee’s thinking about it. Might it even be the same loss affecting them both?

“So does anybody have a better plan?” Overalls asks. Nobody answers him. “Anybody?” The younger woman does nothing beyond turning to looks at him. From her mind emanates a sense of impotent rage and burning fear in addition to the loss. Lee missed the rest of the group’s reactions.

Whatever the hell these people have been through, it’s more than enough to last them a lifetime. Perhaps several, if they’re lucky.

Or if Lee can swing it that way.

Lee stomps on that thought, then does it again and again until she’s sure that it’s dead. She spent all of ten years trying to help as many people as she could, and in the end it wasn’t even a drop in a bucket of water.

A voice speaks to her. “Why don’t you come with us?” Surprised, she whips her gaze around to find Preston giving her a significant look. “We could sure use the help.”

Lee shakes her head after taking a moment to catch up. “Can’t. Too many bad memories in that fuck-ass heap of trash. Just be mindful of my robot butler. He’s still carrying on like nothing happened.”

Lee thinks a moment, as Preston gives her a sad look, and then speaks up again. “Y’know what? I change my mind. I should tell him y’all are coming, at least. But, once that’s done I’m hightailing it out of town and I’m gonna stay out. Alright?” The way Preston just _looks_ at her, like she’s a sad puppy that needs help, is actually infuriating, if she’s being honest with herself.

But then he pulls out a clinking sack from his pack, and hands it to her. “Oh, before I forget. You asked about the Minutemen earlier? One thing you should know is that we help out our friends.” Lee takes the offered sack. “So here. Also, if you ever change your mind again, the settlement will always be open to you.” Judging by the way the sack bulges, and by the noise it makes, Lee guess that it’s full of bottle caps. She wants to say that she didn’t do it for the money, that she couldn’t let some folks in need come to harm under her watch, but…

But she doesn’t have it in her. Not anymore.

Outwardly, Lee smiles and nods. And then everyone sets off for the north.

* * *

_Ruins of the Red Rocket Truck Stop_

The second thing Lee learns about the Minutemen is that they operate by the grace of a network of allied settlements. The newest settlement, Sanctuary, has two neighbors of a fairly decent size. The Abernathy homestead to the south has about 50 bodies, but wants a favor before they’ll send the two they can spare. Tenpines Bluff to the east has 30, but wants the raider band in Lexington out of the way before they’ll send one body.

And Lee's gonna get involved in this because she just can't sit still. Sure, she could just lie down on her back and _wait_ for death.

But that'd be boring.

Given that Lee counts 129 raiders in the old Corvega plant while sitting in Concord, she opts to seek out the old Air Force satellite station a short hike from Tenpines.

But first, Preston wants to have a talk.

“So I’ve been thinking,” Preston says, after giving her a part of the tale of these Quincy survivors, “that the Minutemen need a leader. We need someone who can bring the whole Commonwealth together in a common cause. And I think you have it in you to be that person.”

Lee snorts. “Whatever makes you think _that_?” She’s watching the sun set just below the landscape. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed: the way the sun can paint the sky in such beautiful colors.

“You saved us in Quincy,” Preston responds, an admiring light in his eye, “there wasn’t anything in it for you, but you went and did it anyway. That kind of selflessness has been in mighty short supply around here for quite a while.”

“Is this about Concord?” Lee chuffs. “Anybody with a gun that can get off more than 30 rounds a minute could've done what I did.”

“But that’s just the thing.” Preston responds. “Out of all the fighters in the ‘Wealth who could’ve done that, nobody came. Nobody but _you_.” He emphasizes this last point with a pointed finger.

Lee could see in Preston’s wide-eyed, earnest stare a determination to sell her on this. So she changes tactics.

“Why don’t you do it?” Lee asks. She regrets it a moment later when a flash of loss surges from Preston’s mind.

But outwardly, Preston doesn’t mention a thing. “I don’t have it in me to be-”

Lee cuts him off. “Bull. Shit. Do you have any idea what you achieved? Like, at all?” She grabs the whiskey bottle at her side and takes a pull. It’s disgusting, the way booze was last time she tried it. She offers the rest to Preston, who turns her down, so she sets the bottle aside.

“No?” Preston responds, cocking his head. He's actively frowning, now, but Lee presses him a little further.

“You took command of a leaderless unit,” Lee says, “and you brought your charges out of a fucked situation. How many times have you been a leader before this? Once, twice?” Preston shakes his head. “Oh my God. _None_? C’mon, man. You had to have led at least a fireteam before.” He sets his jaw, telling Lee that she’s treading on thin ice. But after a moment, he shakes his head again.

Lee turns to face him. “You want to talk about leadership? I see all the leadership the Commonwealth needs right in front of me.” Then, she turns back to face the sunset.

“But that isn’t what makes the General.” Preston whispers a moment later.

Lee turns around once more. “Well, if being _the General_ is all about kicking ass, let me refer you to our new neighbors to the north. You took command of your unit, need I remind you, _and you finished the mission_. You were what, outmanned? Outgunned?”

“Outmanned.” Preston answers. He sets his jaw again. Must've lost his whole unit in a slaughter, then.

“You were outmanned,” Lee says, picking up on his answer, “but you fought your way out anyway, and you brought the survivors to this safe place. This _Sanctuary_.” Lee pauses after using the name of the new settlement being set up in the ruins of her old neighborhood.

“Preston,” Lee continues, “before the bombs fell, I used to do what I did in Concord for a living. I don’t have the patience for politics. I don’t have the patience to dole out calm, soothing words to people who need them, but that’s exactly what you’re gonna need in a real leader. Both carrot and stick, if you will.” Preston looks away from her. Lee senses a strong turmoil going on inside his mind, but is unwilling to take a peak. She’s out of things to say, so the final decision is going to be on him.

Preston shuts his eyes and nods. “Okay. I’ll do it.” He looks at her. “Will you join me?”

Lee sticks her hand out and smirks. “Sure thing, Mr. General, sir.” She smiles and snaps off a mock salute, inwardly she having her own little internal crisis. Lee sends up a prayer to a god who always seemed to have her on his shit-list. She asks him to preserve Preston's little band because she's certain that she does not have room for another disaster in her heart.

A comfortable moment later, Preston speaks up. "Now that you're onboard, you know what my first act as General is?"

"What?" Lee asks. She looks over at Preston, curious.

"I'm promoting you to General, effective immediately." he says. 

_ What? _

"What?" Lee asks. The hell? She just got done saying she didn't want the damn job.

Preston chooses to explain himself. "I know you said you didn't want the job, but I think you shouldn't discount your own kind of leadership." Her own kind of what? "From the way you moved in Concord, and from your pep talk earlier," Lee ducks her head, embarrassed over that performance, "I can see that you like to get things done. But if I can be as honest with you as you were with me?" He pauses, waiting for an answer. Lee nods, giving him the go-ahead as she silently dreads what he has to say. “I imagine that some of what you’ll be doing will involve stepping on toes and ruffling feathers.” Oh. That’s not so bad. Lee hears the admonishment, but her shame gets lost in the sense of relief. “So I want to make sure that you’re not going to be held back by someone holding a grudge against you.”

Lee hums. “So why not make me a Lieutenant General? Keep the generalship for yourself and keep me as a clear right hand?”

Preston nods as he makes a sturgeon face. “Okay. Welcome aboard then, Lieutenant General.” He smiles at Lee, who tries but can’t quite form a smile herself. So instead she offers her hand.

“Glad to be here, General.” Lee responds. She turns to face the horizon, lets her thoughts loose to run themselves into a reverie.

“So,” Preston says, breaking that reverie, “you going to Lexington tomorrow?”

Lee shakes her head. “That’s gonna be a seven-day commitment, at least.”

“Seven days?” Preston asks.

“I figure there’s gotta be like, 130 or 140 raiders, based on how many guards they have outside the plant.” Lee answers. “I can’t take on that many at once, with them on the defense.”

“So you won’t take them all at once.” Preston states. He feels fascinated, like she's just given him some new insight, but she doesn't care enough to look.

“Yup.” Lee answers.

By now, the last light of the sun is dipping below the horizon. “The sky’s beautiful.” Lee says.

“It sure is.” Preston responds. Lee hears the smile in his voice. A rogue voice in her brain decides that maybe people can be happy here, after the end of the world.

* * *

_Lexington Ruins_

There are large packs of some kind of humanoid creature running around the ruins of Lexington. Based on Preston’s story, Lee supposes that these human-shaped necrotic messes must be ghouls. Behavior-wise, they’re like something out of a ‘50s b-movie horror film. Their guttural growling and erratic movements bring to mind the zombies of that era, but these things move _fast_. Lee’s first foray into town from the north nearly ends in disaster for her, but she makes it out in once piece, plus a couple more rads and a scratch than she had previously. Nothing a stimpak doesn't fix.

What really frightens her about these ghouls is that she can’t sense their brains. Not until they become active, whereupon she’ll sense a grating clicking noise, like that noise machine they used to use to test a patient’s ears at the doctor’s office.

For her second foray, she circles all the way around the town. Makes it almost halfway to Cambridge before she turns back and attempts to assault the plant from the south.

The raiders are… _disappointing_ opponents, generally. Lee gets one kill, and one of their comrades would rush the body, whooping and shouting something about claiming the drugs the deceased had on their person.

The one time that happened a second raider shot off the hand of the first, laying her own claim to the, the _chems_ , they keep calling them. This quickly spiraled downward into a scuffle and would’ve become a fight if a third raider hadn’t intervened and ordered the guards to locate her position.

But by then, Lee had already moved on, pleased to begin the chase.

She mainly moves between three nests. One to the south, one to the east, and one to the west. There’s a detachment of raiders further into town, but that unit has a fatman in their arsenal, and Lee doesn’t feel like tangling with a miniature nuke launcher right now. But she keeps up this little game of hers, moving between the highway to the south, the ruins to the west, and a small patch of swampland to the east while whittling down their numbers. Sometimes, they’d send out a party to find her, and with her powers Lee would know their plans ahead of time and lay a trap in her own nest for them to find.

But when they stopped posting guards, Lee had to take a closer look inside. She reaches out to their minds, wisping over each and every one of the remaining members of this _Jared’s_ crew. She finds that they’re good and spooked now. They have a fairly even mix of psychopaths and regular folk in their numbers, but each body responds a little differently to the fear. Hell, two of those psychopaths are even looking forward to her appearance as a way to make themselves seem more badass. But in general, Jared is spending his time fortifying the place using the remaining 72 members of his gang.

Lee sighs. It’s been thirteen days already, and while she’s made a real nice dent in their numbers, her supplies won’t last forever. Well, maybe those pipe-based monstrosities they keep using will keep Lee going a while longer, but Lee does not want to switch to .38 caliber rounds to finish the job. Nor also does she want to eat another bit of over-stale Cram.

Clicking. A lot of it, to the south. Once Lee gets over her initial emotional response, she turns her head to face Cambridge. There’s a mass movement of ghouls around one of the old police stations. None of the ghoul brains are sufficiently intact so as to allow her to gather information, but each ghoul does manage to blast a singular emotion, such as rage or curiosity, into their surrounding area. Lee wipes a hand over her face.

And _then_ she senses the reason behind all the fuss. Three humans, well-trained as a unit, battle with the ghouls for their lives. Lee spots the hatred rolling off their leader and their other fighter. It looks to her like those two are invested in the kill, which makes them dumbasses in her eyes. But the hatred rolling off the leader lasts only for a ghost of a second before vanishing behind a sense of pride for his comrades.

Still, they are exceedingly well coordinated… and horrifically outmanned. Lee wipes another hand over her face.

Man, if they turn out to be assholes, Lee is going to regret saving them so much.


	2. Chapter 2

_North of Cambridge Ruins_

Shortly after the experiment that gave Lee her powers, she’d once tried to clap her hands over her ears in a bid to cut out some of the noise. It wasn’t until she started seeking to develop her control that she realized what the noise was: thoughts. She lived in a city of millions of people, and that amounted to a lot of thinking just inside of her range.

In the ruins just ahead of Lee, here in the present, there’s about 30 metric fucktons of clicking coming off of various, undead brains. The sum of all that noise blends together in a pitched whine, and Lee has to resist the impulse to smack her ears because of its resemblance to a fly buzzing next to her head.

Lee’s not stupid. Well, not entirely so. If three dudes confident in their guns and their cover can’t make it against however many ghouls there are, then Lee will need to apply some intelligence and superior equipment. Fortunately, her days of whittling away at the Corvega Raiders have supplied her with plenty of mines, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. As for the intelligence, she’ll have to use her eyeballs up close. She sets off for the Cambridge Ruins, laying the mines down one at a time.

About two miles out she stops to take care of straggler-ghouls along the way and learns something: they’re attracted to noise. The more she uses her gun without a muffler on the barrel, the more ghouls she draws to her location. Which is going to be a problem. 

For her solution, Lee decides to change her goal from reaching the police station to peeling some of the ghouls off the group attacking the station. She takes one of her grenades, pulls the pin, and chucks it into the middle of Harvard Square. The noise has exactly its intended effect. A party of ghouls breaks off from the station and starts heading her way as most of the nearby ghouls move to investigate.

Lee’s heart thumps a violent warbeat in her chest as they mass. They take their sweet time clumping up, but once she’s satisfied with their density, Lee lights a Molotov and hurls it into the crowd. The affected ghouls release an inhuman screech, drawing _more_ attention from the nearby population. An additional party breaks off from the police station to head for the square. 

In response Lee raises her pistol, fires it into the horde, and then shouts. “Hey, assholes!” Something inside of her cracks open, filling her chest with a light and airy feeling so that in spite of her usual calm demeanor, she sticks her tongue out and blows them a raspberry. Then she turns and runs, laughing all the way out of town as she drops some extra mines behind her. Her grin turns manic when one such mine goes off behind her. Seems like the ghouls are giving chase after all. Fuckers.

As Lee runs out of town Curiosity points out an intersection, reminding her that the ghouls are not limited to following her from behind. She looks back to find that the gaggle hasn’t spread out just yet, which is good because it means she can keep laying mines down to bleed their group down to size.

But it’s also bad because her last two mines disappear in a fiery explosion barely seven meters behind her. Welp, she can keep running or she can turn and fight. Lee looks back one more time. 

Guess it’s time to turn and face the music. 

Lee wheels around and finds thirteen ghouls barrelling right at her. She takes a deep breath, draws her pistol, and fires. One round and the frontmost body stumbles, taking five more with it. Two more rounds and the next runner falls dead. Another two and the front six bodies all tumble over each other onto the ground, making room for the previous six ghouls. She tosses another grenade. It goes off as she fires three more rounds from her pistol, severing two legs in the process. Looks like they _can_ be killed. Good.

Just three ghouls are left, each one crawling quickly to reach her. Lee swaps in a new mag and starts firing, making sure to count how many bullets it takes to make one ghoul go down. 

The answer is four.

Lee swaps the old mag back in. It still has four more rounds, and she’s not about to waste them. Looking at her surroundings, she’s still well inside of town. There’s a thoroughly warped sign near her. It looks like it used to be a street sign. Lee can make out the letters to spell “Con” and “Av”. She must be on Concord Avenue. There were a couple of police stations in Cambridge, some of which belonged to Harvard and CIT. 

But more importantly it means that the police station she’s looking for, the one by city hall, is about two and a half kilometers away. 

Lee shrugs and starts walking, only to meet up with a soldierly fellow in power armor about a mile down the road. She recognizes him by listening to his mind. He’s that leader-dude she sensed earlier, near the highway between Lexington and Cambridge. It’s nice to put a face to the thoughts.

Power Armor is looking at all the dead ghouls laying about as Lee walks up to him and starts up a conversation. “Like my handiwork?”

Without ever having given a sign that he knew of her presence, Power Armor’s eyes snap to Lee’s.

“This was you?” he asks. There’s a touch of incredulity in his voice, and Lee senses his mind tossing around a lot of ideas centered around the word _outsider_. It’s a sign to Lee that he doesn’t think much of people who aren’t in whatever geek club he got his Army-grade laser rifle from. 

But the power armor? Lee doesn’t recognize the model. It’s got a chestplate like a T-45, but the pauldrons are segmented. Did somebody pick up a suit of T-45 and tinker with it? It’s a genuinely frightening thought, unlike the possibility that he might be a hateful asshole which just makes Lee mad. Somebody who has enough spare suits of T-45 power armor to tinker with one and make extensive modifications...

Fuck. Lee needs to know more about this guy stat.

Outwardly, Lee smiles and spreads her arms. “You see anybody else covered in ghoul-guts?” 

The corner of Power Armor’s mouth pulls into the ghost of a scowl. “Be that as it may, I am curious as to why a lone civilian is in the middle of a ghoul-infested hole such as this.”

Lee shrugs and points. “I was sniping at raiders this morning over near Lexington. Got your distress call over the radio and decided to come help.” 

Something about the way Power Armor holds himself gives Lee the heebie-jeebies. There’s something not quite natural about his posture, something—

“Are you from a local settlement?” Power Armor asks.

Lee points behind herself. “Yeah. I’m from Sanctuary, up north a-ways.” She narrows her eyes. “Why?”

Power Armor senses that he’s overstepped a little. Lee doesn’t know how, but she’s in no hurry to try and correct him.

“If I appear suspicious,” he explains, “it’s because our mission here has been difficult. From the moment we entered the Commonwealth, we’ve been under almost constant fire.” He looks at Lee thoughtfully. “If you want to continue helping, we could use an extra gun on our side.”

Lee shakes her head. “No can do, bud. I’m trying to make my new home safe, and those Lexington raiders are in the way.” An idea occurs to her. “Although, if you’re willing to make an exchange, I’m willing to be your plus one.”

Power Armor crosses his arms. “I might be. What did you have in mind?”

Score.

“Okay,” Lee begins, “so, you just got done saying you want an extra gun on your side. What I want is your help in assaulting their den. You give me that, and in exchange, I’ll be happy to aid you in your next mission.” 

Power Armor sets his jaw, bores holes into Lee’s face as he turns the offer over in his head.

As his mind keeps coming up with ideas centered around _betrayal_ , Lee offers up another point. “Well, either way I got better things to do than tango with a dude in power armor.”

Power Armor nods. “You make a fair point. Very well civilian. Please accompany me to the police station near city hall.”

Lee nods and smiles as she freaks out internally. This guy strikes her as hardcore army. As in, the same army that committed so many atrocities in Canada, and the same army that massacred civilians in nearby Boston. Fuck. If the army survived, or hell, even if Power Armor’s buddies just come from something _like_ the army, then they’re gonna be a mountain’s worth of trouble for whatever their target is. Lee needs to start collecting intel fast.

“I don’t think I got your name, soldier.” Lee says. She offers out a hand. “Robert Lee Finch, Commonwealth Minutemen. Most people call me Lee.”

Power Armor shakes her hand. “Paladin Danse, Brotherhood of steel.” 

The choice of rank and organization tells Lee two things. First, Danse is backed by a larger group confirmed. Which suggests the second: that this larger group comes from the army. He sure talks like he’s army, what with his clipped speaking style. But the rank is like something out of a pen and paper role-playing game.

“You from the south, Paladin?” Lee asks.

Danse gives her a look. “Something like that.” Lee senses Danse becoming suspicious again, but he says nothing more than his answer. They continue on in silence for a ways, the paladin slowly calming down and dismissing his suspicions.

Then, about a quarter-mile later, Lee speaks again. “So, y’all set up over by City Hall?” 

And just like that, Danse is back to thinking real hard about her. He pays particular attention to the pronoun she used, because he’s never heard it before either from his home down south or from any local he has spoken to.

Still, Danse gives an answer to the question. “The station was already in decent shape when we arrived.” Lee nods. Lots of government buildings were being fortified in the wake of the rioting.

Lee pops her next question. “So, what brings you all the way up here?” Danse nails her with a flat, narrow-eyed look. Lee raises her hands defensively. “Woah, woah, big guy.” When the stare continues, Lee fabricates a partial truth on the spot. “Okay. Fuller disclosure: I used to run with the Minutemen a couple years back. Then a couple days ago I run into one of my old buddies up around Concord, right?” Danse stares, letting her know he’s listening as they come to a stop. “Turns out that the Minutemen have been getting picked apart ever since I left, and that my buddy and his unit got themselves ripped a new asshole not a week ago. Now that you and your _squad_ have shown up, I gotta admit that the timing’s a little _too_ good. Know what I mean?” She lifts her brows, widens her eyes, and spreads her hands in a placating expression.

Danse grunts and nods. “The only contacts we’ve had since insertion have been raiders. Those, ghouls, Super Mutants, and various other abominations.” He turns and resumes his walk, thinking that Lee is impressed by his heated use of the word _abomination_ when she fails to walk with him. When she gathers her wits, Lee decides to play along and shut up, as she processes his words.

Okay, high level of training, well equipped, and a burning hatred for most non-human-bipedal sentients. He also comes from somewhere to the south, which could mean—

Nothing. It means nothing, because she has no idea if any nation states exist _to the north_ , and she But even then she’s still kinda lucky, in a way, because she just so happened to get it right when she thought she had a 50-50 split. Too bad _the south_ could mean DC just as easily as it could mean Florida.

Holy fuck she needs more intel. But she just pressed Danse as much as she’s willing to without making herself seem even more suspicious. 

And he’s not quite thinking ahead to the long term. The only wisps Lee can catch from his mind are a few ideas: _gather tech_ , _destroy abominations_ , and _secure our position_.

Lee spots one last thing about Danse: there’s a hole in his head, about where his the limbic system in his brain should’ve been. Sturges was the same way, come to think of it. And like Sturges, the overalls-wearing man with a southwestern accent, most of the neural activity in Danse’s brain is centered around that hole. It’s something significant. The question is: what does it mean?

* * *

_Ruins of ArcJet Systems Research Facility_

A few hours later, Lee has determined one thing it _doesn’t_ mean: rhetoric.

As Danse babbles on and on about the evils of the _old world_ , Lee’s greatest problem so far is trying to stifle the urge to grab Danse’s face and tell him everything she knows. And that’s after she ticks off two more pieces of information about this brotherhood: first, Danse has confirmed the brotherhood to be descended from the army. As in, she popped him a question back at the police station and he straight up told her that the Brotherhood is _an army_. True, it’s not the same as saying _we can trace our origins to the old world we profess to hate_ , but it _is_ one more clue in a list that keeps adding up towards the Brotherhood being founded by someone or some group with close ties to the army.

But second, the bitterness with which Danse summarizes the evils of ‘corporations like this’, as he referred to the now-defunct ArcJet Systems, tells her that he’s a hardliner. A man devoted to his cause. For her sake it means she needs to pay close attention to whatever bull he’s trying to feed her and make sure that she doesn’t absorb any. 

Lee’s so deep into her thoughts that she nearly bumps into Danse when the latter stops just inside a doorway. She peers around him to try and see why he stopped.

Danse’s voice comes out sharp and tense. “Look at this.” 

There are five Protectrons wearing their factory colors, lying about in various states of brokenness.

“Looks like we missed the party.” Lee notes. 

The sudden lack of automated security would be a good thing, hell maybe even a _great_ thing, but there’s not a single spent bullet casing in sight. That and the distinct lack of blood spatters suggests that the bots were given the royal smackdown by… other bots.

Great.

“You’re making a foolish and hasty assessment.” Danse snaps. He points at each of the bots in turn. “Look at the evidence. There isn’t a single spent casing or drop of blood in sight.” In a move that’s unquestionably designed for dramatic flair, he turns to face Lee and deliver his verdict. “These robots were assaulted by Institute Synths.”

Lee shifts her weight onto one foot as she places a hand on her hip. “They friends of yours?” Danse’s mind unleashes a massive wave of displeasure. Lee can almost envision an image of him boring holes through his helmet and into her face using nothing more than his glare.

Danse’s posture relaxes. “No. But my team has had multiple contacts in the past, all hostile.” Okay, so these other bots _aren’t_ the neighborhood welcome-wagon.

Lee nods. “One more question if you don’t mind, Paladin.” 

Danse cocks his head then straightens up. Lee senses a wisp of surprise underneath the flare of frustration just before he responds.

“Go ahead.” Danse answers.

“Are these synths any better armored than a Protectron or an Assaultron?” Lee asks. She taps her ten millimeter pistol for emphasis. More surprise comes off of Danse’s mind. Just how badly had he underestimated her?

Danse’s answer is flat and perfunctory. “A standard laser rifle will be sufficient. I trust that that’s what’s on your back?” He points to the modified Minuteman musket she picked up from Concord.

“Not quite. It’s got a laser barrel in the center,” Lee says, retrieving the weapon, “but—”

Danse cuts her off. “Is that a _hand crank_?” 

Lee suppresses the urge to roll her eyes. Why yes, Paladin, yes it is. Speaking of paladins, do you play dungeons and dragons, by any chance? She swallows another sarcastic response and answers the question. 

“Yep. Why, you want to try it?” Lee asks.

Danse goes still, answers slowly like she’s grown a second head or something similarly weird. “No. My own rifle will be sufficient, thank you.” He glances at the doorway leading further into the facility. “Besides, we’ve already lost enough time as it is.”

Lee motions towards that doorway. “After you, sir.” Much as she enjoys a good repartee, Lee’s glad when Danse sets off without a word. She follows close behind, keeping an eye out for scrap she’d like to come back for. There’s an issue of Tesla Science magazine on the way. She grabs it from the CEO’s old desk, and puts it into her bag.

Two doorways later, they hit a locked door. There’s a couple terminals in the room, and some computing equipment along one wall. As for the rest, there’s trash almost as far as the eye can see. Three wrecked filing cabinets line one wall, a meter cabinet, some chairs, and more computing equipment make up the rest of the furniture. Everything else is best thought of as either salvage or trash. Lee shakes her head. These wastelanders must have something else going on if they haven’t gotten around to cleaning up the city just yet.

Danse orders her to get the door open. Makes sense for her to do it, given the fat fingers of the glove of his armor. Hell, the hydraulics in the glove alone would probably squish the terminal long before Danse could feel it. Lee loads the _laser musket_ , as Preston referred to it, using a fusion cell and flips the newly installed selector switch on one side. If the robotic buzzing on the other side of the door is any indication, now would be a great chance to put to use that mod Sturges cooked up for her.

The buzzing takes her back, for a moment, to two weeks ago, when she first heard it coming out of Codsworth. It was weird then, to find out that her robot butler had evolved over the years into a sentient being. Weirder still to discover that she _can_ sense artificial intelligences through the buzzing and use that to separate evolved AI-sentients from plain old robots. 

Turning back to the terminal, Lee racks her brain trying to remember the tricks she used to use in the old days, until she remembers that she didn’t. The RobCo OS standard on most every terminal allows the user to do some really stupid shit, like telling the computer to plug half the memory into a hex editor where an attacker could play a game of ‘Guess which word is the password!’

But best part to all that shit is how RobCo decided to just shift around where the passwords were stored in memory and call _that_ security. And even then it took a congressional inquiry to get _that_ much out of old Bobby House. Lee suppresses the urge to sigh and roll her eyes. She’s got a job to do. Only thing stopping her is not knowing whether she needs to start 44 bytes into page F9, 80 bytes into page F6, or 48 bytes into page 94.

Lee decides to ask Danse. “Hey Paladin. You wouldn’t happen to know where the passwords are stored in memory, would you?” She looks over her shoulder at him. His answer is going to be informative in some way, even if he doesn’t know the answer to her question.

“Is there a problem?” he answers.

Lee senses a wisp of frustration coming out of him.

Lee turns back to face the terminal. “Nope. I’m just super rusty.” And that buzzing is starting to grate on her nerves. She tries page F6 first. If she’s wrong the worst that’ll happen is that her chances go up to 50-50.

“Have you considered investigating the other terminal?” Danse asks. 

Lee recognizes the tone as a primly veiled order. She manages to navigate her way to the end of page F8, but there’s nothing more than garbage data.

Lee answers the question. “Yep. Only reason I’m still over here is because I don’t have a lot of confidence in the _world-famous RobCo Computing System!_ ” She alters her inflection on the last few words to match the ads that used to air on TV, all the freaking time. Instead of going to page F9, Lee reboots the terminal. 

Well, guess she doesn’t have to worry about death by commercial now.

This time, at the command screen, she points the memory viewer at page 94. 

Lee smiles when the right half of the screen fills up with words and garbage. “Bingo.”

“Got it?” Danse asks. This time, a wisp of relief rises from the Paladin’s brain.

“Yep.” Lee responds. “Now the fun part starts.” 

To be fair to RobCo, their terminals are smart enough to dump a bunch of junk and old passwords into the memory viewer, even in maintenance mode. But that doesn’t protect the user from their weak hash algorithm. It just means that every time she tries to break in, at least one of the passwords on screen is guaranteed to work.

There’s a shift in the buzzing just on the other side of the door. A metallic “Hello?” sidles in through the broken window. Then, Lee gets a match on her second guess and takes a knee as she waits for the user menu to come up.

Another metallic voice speaks up. “Inquiry: what appears to be the trouble?”

It’s followed by the first metallic voice. “Hostile sensor reading detected.” A rustling on Lee’s right tells her that Danse already has his laser rifle out and pointed. Lee selects _Door Control_ off the menu as she eyes her modified laser musket. Most of the text being printed out is a notice of some sort. She assumes that it has some corny propaganda byte like _Uncle Sam is watching_ , but she doesn’t really look at it. The buzzing from behind the door has shifted again. She can’t tell what it means, unlike with Codsworth who developed the buzzing while she was on ice and mainly emits it as a reflection of his emotions.

Lee glances back to the screen for a moment, sees that there’s only one option on the menu that popped up. She glances to her right to see Danse staring at her. She holds up three fingers, then gives the thumbs up symbol. Danse nods, indicating that he’ll be ready on three. Lee raises her right hand.

One.

Two.

Three. Lee presses enter, grabs her musket and cranks it to start drawing power from the fusion cell. The door opens a moment later to the surprise of two distinctly human-shaped robots.

“Open fire!” Danse shouts, and it’s the push she needs to do exactly that.

Lee’s gun has only been slightly modified to increase its rate of fire, so she has to keep one hand on the trigger as she works the crank. The mod works beautifully, however, as the musket outpaces even a fully automatic laser rifle. The gun covers the doorway in a red hail, obscuring her targets for just a moment before the crank locks up.

Lee whips her hand away from the gun, shakes it like it touched an open flame. “Shit.”

“Outstanding.” Danse says by way of commentary. Lee looks over to him. He’s staring right at her gun, which melted a little from all the heat. Lee senses that he was impressed by her weapon, and it’s not hard to see why.

The two ‘synths’ are now a pile of ash on the floor where they stood. Too bad her gun probably won’t fire again without some repairs.

Lee points it out. “Looks like it ruined the gun, however.”

Danse grunts. “It appears that one of their guns survived intact.” He points to one of the ash piles.

Lee’s eyes follow Danse’s pointer finger to one of the ash piles and spots white barrel sticking out of one of the ash piles. She goes to pick it up as Danse moves ahead to the next doorway. Looks like a plastic casing surrounding some kind of alloy. It’s nothing like the laser guns she used to see in the army. But now that she’s holding it, Lee knocks on the casing. It makes a noise quite unlike any plastic she’s ever tried, but the gun feels oddly comfortable when she gives it a test-point at the workbench in the corner of this side of the room. Looking to her left, she’s not entirely convinced that the wall actually marks out two rooms. Her gut tells her that it must’ve all been one room, once upon a time.

But that’s a conversation for another day. For now, Danse is looking at her from his place just inside the next doorway. His general posture indicates impatience, but the fact that he hasn’t spoken up yet says otherwise. Lee turns around and gives the gun a few test shots. It feels damn slick, this laser rifle, but the shots all come out a very faint red.

The Helpful Paladin™ points out the obvious. “That might not be useful as-is, civilian.”

Lee turns the gun over and sees a dial. It’s labeled with a number of abbreviated words. She can’t make most of them out, but ‘Kill’ is pretty obvious and knowing that makes ‘Dis’ a ringer for _disable_. Only question is what happens when Lee bumps it up?

“Hang on a minute.” Lee says. “I found a switch.”

She fires a shot at the wall, and it comes out a very nice, deep shade of royal blue. Lee turns around to face Danse, grinning like a goof.

“I think I like it.” Lee tells him.

Danse nods. “Outstanding. Let’s move out.”

Contrary to their first impressions, the rifle is actually better than the old army-issue AER9. It’s quick to atomize any synths they meet on their way to the engine room at the heart of the building.

Once at the engine room, however, Danse quickly spots that the elevator is out.

“The lights are still on.” he notes. “See if you can find a way to power up the elevator.”

Lee follows him down the stairs to the bottom and looks around. The room itself has to be around three or four stories high, probably more considering it contains a rocket engine suspended in midair by some damn strong girders. She scans the room around her, then looks back at the rocket engine. It’s huge. Definitely bigger than the one they used to get to the moon. She scans the room again, realizing that she’s not making much progress by gawking at the big-ass engine. In her defense, however, it’s still suspended above the ground when it _should_ be lying on the floor in pieces, right about now.

Curiosity pokes her shoulder and asks if the engine still works. It’s actually a pretty good question, when Lee turns it over once. And it’s well-timed, too, considering that she hits the floor right at the question was asked. There’s a control room right on the other side of the test chamber from her. With the elevator on the left and the only doorway at this level on her right, she goes for the door to reach it.

Looking at the floor, Lee can’t tell whether it’s covered in ash, slag, or both. While slag would explain where some of the gantries above her went, there’s a thin layer of black dust spread all over the floor and walls that couldn’t have come from the gantries alone. Slag also does not explain why the gantries above where she entered the room with Danse look like they were broken.

Inside the control room, there’s a control panel and some shelves. The panel is dead, but it’s backed up against a window that looks into the engine room Lee just came from, with a wire leading to a doorway in the back. Near the shelves sits a table, holding up a wrench, a holotape, and a weird-ass device built around what looks like a tube of some kind. She picks up the holotape, puts it into her pipboy and presses the play button as continues through the back doorway.

The tape is a recording of some dude with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, considering how it opens by going through a list of negative words to do with laughter such as _jeering_ and _mocking_. Lee passes by a generator and notes the fusion core still in it. The recording is very short on the whole, after the initial statements, the tech goes on to crow about what he must consider to be his crowning achievement: the _Junk Jet_. Lee figures that that must be the name of the device. Her mind starts to wander back to it as she spots a terminal on a cabinet, but she pulls it back as she kneels to check out the terminal.

Once the terminal has finished powering up, it displays a menu of one item: Activate Auxiliary Power. There are two status messages indicating an unknown fault in the power system coming from the main generator, and that the auxiliary system is ready to go whenever. Lee hits enter to start the backup generators.

And in a moment of excellent timing, she hears laser weaponry going off behind her as soon as she does. Lee runs back to the control room to find Danse engaging with far too many synths all on his own. The power armor would help a lot, but Lee needs to get in there, and fast. She dashes out into the corridor—

Only to find that the doorway leading to the engine room had shut itself since she last passed through it. Lee tries the handle. 

Locked.

She tries yanking it, thinking that maybe it’s stuck. Nope, definitely locked.

Lee hauls ass back into the control room, looks for a button, a lever, _something_ that will open the door. But there’s nothing except for two big, red buttons. One on the control panel, and one more on the wall. She taps the one on the wall next to her, assuming that the one on the control panel controls the engine.

A flat, electronic voice opens up over an unseen speaker. “Command accepted. Commencing countdown.”

Oh, fuck.

The countdown begins at ten. Lee can do nothing but watch through the window. There’s no way she’ll make it even if the door was open. She’s fast, but not _that_ fast.

Curiosity takes the opportunity to show her the neural activity going on in Danse’s brain, how it lights up in all the right places _except for that fucking hole in the center_. Which begs the question: _what does that hole mean?_

“Three.” The robo-voice says. “Two. One. Test fire commencing.”

Lee watches Danse get swallowed up in white-hot flame. 

She stands there a moment, trying to will away what’s happening before her eyes, but in the end it’s entirely unnecessary because Danse _doesn’t_ die.

One of the earliest lessons Lee learned in controlling her powers was distancing herself from other human minds. While it became a kind of survival tactic on the battlefields of Alaska, she leaves herself partly exposed by mistake as she witnesses Danse being engulfed in white-hot flame. She senses the discomfort coming off of him in waves. 

He’s, he _should_ be getting cooked right now, but he isn’t. He’s too busy asking himself if this is what an oven feels like. 

Lee can’t believe it. She _wouldn’t_ believe it, if the evidence weren’t right in front of her.

Woah.

When the engine shuts off, the doors swing open of their own accord. Lee dashes out to where Danse is. She finds him kneeling on the slag-and-ash-covered floor, breathing hard into the mic in his helmet. 

The suit still works?

Damn.

“Oh my God, are you alright?!” Lee asks.

“Fine.” Danse wheezes. “Got– just got cooked by those flames.” He sighs. “Thankfully my power armor kept me in one piece.”

Fear grabs Lee by the shoulders, screams at her to grab Danse’s helmet and call bullshit on his explanation, because there’s _no way_ that the armor would’ve taken that, those umpty-million joules of heat. Danse spots the elevator, its indicator now lit up to show that it’s operational. “Looks like the area’s secure. Let’s head up to the control room.”

Lee follows close behind, her mind spiraling slowly towards a conclusion as inevitable as it is game-changing: _Danse isn’t human_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _LE GASP_
> 
>  
> 
> It's another chapter!!!

_Outskirts of Boston Ruins_

Lee works her way into Boston over the next ten days, stopping at each settlement along the way to provide assistance and secure alliances. Just about every favor they ask of her is on her way except for Greygarden, which asks her to make a detour to the old Weston Water plant as part of the negotiations.

Her next stop calls itself Oberland Station, and as she comes up on the old interlocking tower by the tracks she spots a couple of shacks and a set of oversized garden plots. It's nothing like the Abernathy Homestead or even Sanctuary. Too small to be a hamlet or even a village, Lee struggles to come up with a name for it until Curiosity points out that _settlement_ is a perfectly valid name in this context. The naming question resolved, she proceeds with life feeling no better for the resolution of the question. 

Truth be told, Lee relishes every little distraction she can get because her mind abhors silence and the one subject it wants to ponder most is the subject she just can’t bring herself to think about right now.

A voice calls out, interrupting her thoughts. “That’s close enough, stranger.” 

Lee stops. She looks around for where the voice came from, and finds a man standing a few feet in front of her. He’s a scraggly-looking fella wearing a plaid shirt that’s coming apart at the seams and a pair of jeans that’s more patch than denim. She was so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed him moving, but now she sees that he’s standing behind a fallen tree. The only question in Lee’s mind is whether his choice is one of convenience or pragmatism.

The man tilts his chin at her and asks a question in his gruff, gravelly voice. “So what’s a merc like you doing out here in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere?”

Lee shrugs. “Nothing much, really. Just bumming around the Commonwealth on behalf of the Minutemen.”

The man straightens up, interested. “The Minutemen? We thought you guys were done for.”

Lee stretches. “Guess a legion of Gunners isn’t enough to kill the idea that we can all build a future if we work together.”

The man’s eyes go wide. “You’re joking. Gunners?!”

Lee nods. “Yep.” She shifts her weight from one foot to another. “Funny thing is, not everybody was killed in Quincy, so we also got a new General out of the deal. Speaking of change, though, I wanted to talk to you about joining up again.”

The man’s eyes widen a bit as his face falls. Looks like the Minuteman infighting did more than just hobble them.

“We can’t make deliveries directly to your castle.” he says.

Lee shakes her head. “You won’t have to. You’ll only have to make sure that goods can go to and from Greygarden to the north, and your soon-to-be-new neighbors to the east, if all goes well.”

“We still can’t spare nobody.” the man responds.

Lee casually places her hands on her hips, drawing attention to her guns.

“Anything I can do to help with that?” she asks.

The man goes still. She senses his mind preparing a fight-or-flight response and suppresses the urge to sigh. Lee never was the greatest communicator. It’s the biggest part of why she argued so heavily against becoming General. But then Preston went and made her a general anyway. Fuck.

They stand there a moment, nervous man looking at the battle-scarred veteran. She doesn’t take her hand away from her pistol, in case he decides that it might be prudent to just shoot her, but neither also does she allow her tension to show. Not while his mind swings to and away from the decision to shoot her.

But eventually he relaxes, realizes that she’s actually offering to help.

He tells her about their problem. “Alright. There’s a pack of ghouls holed up somewhere down the tracks.” He sighs and points to the south. “They weren’t a problem for a while, but lately they’ve been wandering out further and further.” And now he looks back at her. “You take care of them, and I’ll talk to the others about joining up.”

Lee nods and starts moving around the tower to follow the tracks. 

As she leaves, the man shouts after her. “Glad to have you back, Minuteman. Hope you’ll stick around this time!”

She turns back and shouts. “Me too!”

* * *

_Outside the entrance to Vault 81_

With Oberland Station squared away, Lee went into a Vault she found while searching for the ghouls. Well, the _in_ part is still a work in progress.

On her way in, Lee noticed a massive glow coming from where Cambridge used to be. Even bigger than where Diamond City is on her Pip-Boy’s map. It makes her wonder what this other settlement could be, and why few people seem to know about it.

She used to think that her tendency to conceal her identity was direct result of working black ops in the last two years before the bombs. Her current conversation, however, strongly demonstrates otherwise.

“Now how about you try that again,” the man on the other end of the intercom says, “ _where_ did you get a working Pip-boy?”

“ _Woah_ ,” she responds, “what’s with the third degree?”

“It’s called _protocol_ , smart-ass.” The security guard retorts. “Come back when you’re ready to cooperate.” And with that, he shuts off the intercom.

Lee huffs and takes a step back. Goddamn ass-faced security guard doesn’t want to let her in? She sighs. Okay, that’s him doing his job right. But fuck them both if Lee doesn’t _really_ want in now.

She looks around. The door to Vault 81 was built deep inside a cave. A massive steel construct frames a gear-shaped door that’s more than twice her height in diameter and is itself framed by the hollowed-out rock chamber she’s standing in. Lee stands on a metal platform, with a set of stairs leading down into the chamber over to her left and a couple consoles in front of her. On the other side of the chamber is another platform in front of the door, with its own set of stairs also leading down into the chamber.

Looking at the console, it seems pretty vanilla. She pulls out an old memory of reading through an issue of _Total Hack_ that outlined some quick mods she could make to Vault-Tec hardware. Looks like another score for long term memory. Dropping to her knees, she looks underneath and spots a number of screw holes. Huh. Does she have any screwdrivers that’d fit?

Lee reaches a hand behind her back and digs through one of the side pockets on her pack until she finds a long, rod-like object. She kicks Laughter in the shin before it can try some puerile pun on that thought, and tries to use the tool on a screw.

But the head’s too big.

Sighing, Lee replaces the screwdriver and searches for a smaller implement. She pulls out another screwdriver that’s just barely smaller than the last one, but it fits the screws so she sets to work trying to remove the panel. There are two screws along the bottom, and two more up top. Once those come off, the top panel comes loose, but it doesn’t budge. Tapping her chin a moment, Lee starts looking for more screws. The intercom is secured to the top panel by a total of eight screws. The big red button is attached to the main board by four more. With those twelve screws out of the way, the top panel comes right off. 

Most of the newly exposed wires are bundled around two lines: one leading from the button, the other leading from a transceiver attached to the intercom’s mic and speaker. Lee replaces the panel. There isn’t much she can do to the console, so she’ll have to go for plan B: pip-boy hacking.

Between leaving the vault and helping Preston in Concord, Lee passed through the ruins of Sanctuary Hills. There, Codsworth gave her what will probably be the only recording of her dead husband’s voice that she’s going to have, and a holotape containing most of the hacks she used to use before the bombs.

Thinking of those leads her back to that new hole in her mind. The one that draws all her thoughts down into an all-consuming void. As she draws near, it tosses out a reminder: she had another job coming down the pipeline. Curiosity idly wonders if she could find the dead drop. The upper class of Boston was known to receive the lion’s share of rations. There’s bound to be something useful if she can follow the chain. But first she throws the hold into the hell bucket, where all her other shit goes.

Back to the console, Lee retrieves the holotape and inserts it into her Pip-boy. A couple seconds and a couple twists of the dial later, she has the Vault-Tec specific program loaded and ready to go. She slams the connector home, pushes the button, and waits a few seconds for the program to do its thing. The silence is long enough to allow Fear to start whispering danger into her ear and drive her hand towards her pistol. 

The stand-clear klaxon goes off. It’s followed by a hissing of hydraulic lines rolling the door’s machinery into place. And then the door eases back _just so_. The machine moves at a ponderous pace, which both heightens Lee’s stress level and alters her perception of time. She feels a shift in her mind as systems she built a long time ago kick in to give her room to think. A coolness fills her head and chest, soothing her mounting stress and frustration without slowing her heart rate. It helps her deal with the perception that the door is now taking literal hours to move an inch.

When it finally does roll back, the door reveals several security guards and one rather displeased non-combatant. Given their relative positioning, the redheaded non-com appears to have overall command, while the man standing behind her appears to be the guards’ direct supervisor. The Security Chief, in other words. Beyond that, well the most important part is that all the guards have their weapons pointed at her. Anything else will have to wait until she’s not on such thin ice. After all, time to think does _not_ mean time to act.

The woman in charge speaks up. “Is there a reason you’re forcing your way in, wastelander?”

Lee shrugs. “I wanted to take a look inside.”

Leader-lady crosses her arms as she quirks a brow. “Really? Is that all?”

Lee takes the opportunity to start from the top. “Well, considering that I’m new in town and like to offer my services as a _security consultant_ in between merc jobs, yes.”

Leader-lady’s right hand taps a displeased rhythm on her left arm. “And what does a _security consultant_ do, exactly?”

“Depends on the job.” Lee responds. “If you want it done cheap I can come in, take a look around, and tell you or your chief back there,” she points to the man whose mind is seething in impotent rage right now, “what needs shoring up. If you want me to do a good job, though, that’s gonna involve me simulating an entry attempt.” She taps the console, having never moved from it during the conversation. “Like what I did here.”

Security Chief’s rage dissipates. He perks up a bit, interested. He leans forward and whispers in Leader-lady’s ear. 

Leader-lady listens without reacting, and when he straightens up, speaks. “And what _did_ you do?”

Lee taps her pip-boy. “Old hacking program. Some kind of a super-secret project, so I don’t think that there are many of these in circulation.” The one she does have was purpose-built for her own use, after all. “So if you want to send me away, I think chances are good that you won’t encounter this thing for a long time. Otherwise, if you want to hire me I’ll be happy to throw in a patch for this shit for free.”

Leader-lady stares Lee down, not ready to say yes, but also not ready to tell her to fuck off either. They all stand there a moment, the guards still pointing their weapons, Leader-lady looking like somebody took a shit and she’s more-or-less forced to clean it up and is in the process of deciding how. Meanwhile, Security Chief also stares Lee down, still mildly interested.

At last, Leader-lady comes to a realization. Her shoulders begin shaking a moment before she can be heard chuckling. 

Lee smiles. Looks like Leader-lady gets it.

Leader-lady gestures to the guards. “Lower your weapons.”

Security Chief whips his head around to face her. “Ma’am?”

Lee pegs Security Chief as the assface from earlier. In what should be a surprise to no one, he does not have an ass for a face. Pity.

Leader-lady turns to face him and smiles. “Lower your weapons.”

Security Chief stares at her a moment, trying to puzzle out whatever she saw in Lee. But only for a moment, after which his eyes widen at some realization then fall back to their normal place. Curiosity suggests that Lee skim their minds to find out what’s going on.

Lee reaches out, wrapping around the chief’s mind just enough to listen in. And it sounds like…

Wait. Are they _together_? On the one hand, Lee gets the sense of clarity the chief has from his revelation, but on the other hand— She switches to Leader-lady’s mind, repeating the same procedure to listen in on her thoughts. Leader-lady is mostly over her moment of insight, her current mood has settled into a mix of pleasure at being in the presence of an equal, and, and a mix of tenderness and affection that says _close relationship_. So that’s what Lee calls it. 

She then gets blindsided because the feel of that tenderness claws at her newest mind-hole. Lee gasps. Once the initial wave washes over her, she moves to control the damage by throwing up some walls. They obstruct the emotional flow, and soon enough Lee calms down.

“You doing alright, miss?” a female voice asks.

Lee’s gaze refocuses back onto Leader-lady, who is in turn looking back at Lee with an expression of guarded concern on her face. Lee nods.

Leader-lady moves on. “Okay, so do we get the patch if we just hire you for anything?”

Lee nods. “Yup.”

Leader-lady quirks a brow. “Alright. What do you charge to just look around?”

“500 caps upfront,” Lee says. “and then 200 caps once I’m finished.”

“Done.” Leader-lady responds. She then extends a hand towards Lee. “Gwen McNamara. I’m the Overseer of this vault.”

Lee takes a couple steps forward and shakes it. “Robert Lee Finch.” As a conversation-starter, Lee starts making up a cover story. “Just got out of the mercenary racket.”

Overseer McNamara’s eyes go wide. “Really?” She starts walking further into the vault.

Lee nods. “Yep.” She slips into the accent of her youth as she starts chattering away. “Got tired of shooting people who didn’t do nothing to deserve it, so one day I packed my bags and started wandering north.”

The Overseer nods. “Lots of people are wanderers around here. But not all of them just pack up their bags and leave.”

As Lee turns to face the Overseer, she has to stomp out a rogue thought before it can force its way out of her mind. After all, she doesn’t need to go around telling everyone her life story. And it’s not like she has to invent one now.

Lee shakes her head. “Killing’s all I know.” That, law, neurology, and a little bit of that computing science a bunch of eggheads were putting together before the war. But again, she doesn’t need to go telling everyone her life story.

Nevertheless, Overseer McNamara buys it. “You ever consider picking up a trade?”

Lee shrugs. “I should. Be a—” and for once, she stumbles. She was going to say that a trade would be more useful, but her gut tells her that that would be trying too hard to sell her story. Sensing that Overseer McNamara has already taken note of her slip, Lee opts to spin another yarn. “Whoops,” she chuckles, “almost forgot how to put it politely: I meant to say that it’d be useful to have a trade if I ever feel like settling down.”

Overseer McNamara nods and makes a satisfied little sound.

Then she sticks her arm out to point at their first stop. “This is the atrium.”

Lee nods absently, her mind already drifting off to her next moves. She’s probably going to map out a way into Fenway Park, or Diamond City, or whatever the hell these newer folk call it.

* * *

_Outside the Ruins of Fenway Park_

_A.K.A. Diamond City_

Two firefights and a roadblock later, Lee is preparing herself to deal with a very perceptive woman. Someone who she suspects will be able to see right through Lee’s facade. She rounds a corner and sees the woman in question for the first time.

The woman is wearing a red longcoat and exchanging some heated words with the intercom. Her warm black hair falls down to the length of her shoulder She carries a ten millimeter N99 pistol on one hip. Plenty of firepower for humans, but no spare ammo in sight. Does she rely on her wits or what?

Fear shifts its weight on Lee’s shoulders. Lee’s never had a great relationship with reporters, police, or anybody who spots lies for a living, but she’s feeling more and more run down since she got this close to Diamond City and she doesn’t feel like contesting her story with anyone.

Lee strolls on up to the intercom just as the woman gets cut off. From the sound of it, the gate-dude decided to stop talking to her. Red-coat clenches her fists as she flicks her forearms downwards. Then, she notices Lee.

“Hey, you. You want into Diamond City, right?” Red-coat whispers as Lee approaches.

Lee shrugs. “I just got here, but yeah.”

Red-coat throws a finger over her lips and shushes Lee. Lee senses Red-coat taking note of her tense jaw and relaxed fingers. That, and that Red-coat quashes down whatever objection or question she has in order to proceed.

“Just play along, okay?” Red-coat whispers.

Lee nods. She’s willing to play into Red-coat’s developing scheme until the gate is reopened.

Red-coat turns back to the intercom. “Oh, what’s that? You’re a trader from Quincy?”

Ouch. Preston’s band came from Quincy. Ain’t nothing there now but a brand-new pile of rubble, ruin, and assholes. Still, Red-coat presses onwards. And it’s not like she necessarily already knows… or is it? Lee blinks. Now that she’s thinking about it, she realizes that hearing about Quincy from many of the settlements she’s helped indicates that the news has already spread through the greater Boston area. But on the other hand—

“Geeze, Piper, alright.” The man on the intercom sighs. “No need to make it personal.”

Piper turns to face Lee and whispers once more. “Better head inside quick before old Danny catches on to the bluff.”

Lee raises both of her hands, palms facing outward, as she answers. “You first.”

Piper smirks. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Then she heads on in.

A man in a tan suit meets them just inside the gate. Grey hair frames a pompous face that sneers at Piper as she walks in. Even through an increasingly foggy mind, Lee can tell that this guy is a jackass.

“Piper!” he shouts, gesturing vaguely to their surroundings. “Who let you back in side? I told Sullivan to keep that gate shut!”

Piper doesn’t answer, opting instead to close the distance as her mind seethes with a subtle mixture of rage and fear regarding this man. Lee can guess at the rage. The suit in charge obviously tried to lock her out of town via the gate guard. But the fear is different. It doesn’t just say _you have power over me_ , it says... something _more_. But Lee can’t figure out what that something is without doing an invasive search of Piper’s mind. So she does nothing, not knowing if Piper could be trusted to keep her secret and not willing to make any invasive moves without asking—

Piper’s voice interrupts Lee’s thoughts. “Why not ask the newcomer?” She looks over at Lee to catch her doing the same. “Do you support the news? Because the Mayor’s threatening to throw free speech in the dumpster!”

Without missing a beat, Lee fires back at this mayor. “Always believed in Freedom of the press.”

The mayor’s eyes widen as he notices Lee. “Oh. I didn’t mean to drag you into this, Miss.” He adjusts his ratty-looking tie as he clears his throat. “No, no, no. You look like Diamond City material.” This mayor, McDonough is what she thinks Piper called him, flashes her a shark smile. The kind designed to put a body at ease, make them receptive, friendly even.

But it doesn’t work on Lee because she’s seen it used way too many times. If anything, it just pisses her off that he’s being so openly dishonest. But at the same time, it’s not like the thoughts of hundreds of people moving and living just beyond the wall are helping matters. Lee blinks hard. She’s being a little slow at the moment. Is her mind having trouble keeping up with so many minds in such a proximity?

“Are you feeling alright, miss?” McDonough asks.

Lee jumps. Yeah, she’s not doing so hot right now, but she sure as hell ain’t going to admit that to the smarmy bastard.

“Well, for one thing, this hasn’t been the friendliest welcome.” Lee snaps. Admittedly the pleasure she feels at seeing that smile, designed to make someone think that their presence just lights up the smiler’s day, shatter is pretty ugly. But she needs to get in, do her business, and get out. The sooner the better, so that she can start trying to figure out how to handle—

Some stray person, operating at the far edge of Lee’s range, shouts aloud. “I am the Mechanist!”

Lee tries to direct her attention to that particular mind, but is derailed a second time by Piper taking charge of the conversation.

“She’s got you there McDonough. Guess not everyone gets won over by that shark smile of yours.” Piper hollers. Her posture has relaxed quite a bit.

In response, McDonough clears his throat and directs his attention to Lee. “Now is there anything particular you came to our city for?”

Lee pinches the bridge of her nose as she screws her eyes shut. She then consciously checks and relaxes the muscles of her face before moving on.

“Sure, sure.” Lee says. “I mean, surely the mayor of a great city knows everyone. So who can help me find a missing person?”

McDonough looks between Lee and Piper. 

He clears his throat again before speaking, if hesitantly. “Well… there is one private citizen. Nick Valentine. A, uh, detective of sorts who specializes in such cases. Usually for debts or whatnot.” Here he lets out a slight chuckle filled with tension.

And while that does invite Curiosity’s attention, Lee is simply too disoriented by the magnitude of people inside her range to try and gather information.

True to his smarmy self, the man tries to gracefully smarm his way out of the exchange. “I’m sorry Diamond City security doesn’t have time to help, but I’m sure Mister Valentine charges a reasonable fee.”

At Lee’s side, Piper chuffs then whispers. “This is ridiculous.” Out loud, she confronts McDonough one more time. “I want the truth, McDonough: what’s the _real_ reason security always shrivels away when a missing persons case comes up?”

In response, McDonough issues a threat. “I’ve had enough of this, Piper. From now on, consider you and that little sister of yours on notice.” Then, he walks away.

Piper, who just unknowingly blasted Lee with a spike of fear, calls after him. “Yeah, keep talking McDonough. That’s all you’re good for!”

McDonough dismisses her with a wave and a grunt, not even bothering to look back at them as he continues on his way.

“I’m impressed.” Piper says, turning to Lee. “Not everybody can claw information out of McDonough’s tight-fisted hands.”

Lee turns to her and raises a brow. “You mean he had not intention of actually helping me?”

Piper raises a brow to that. “You’re new here, huh?” Before Lee can answer, she moves on to her next topic. “So, you’re after a missing person but you won’t say who or why. Why don’t you stop by my office? I think I just found my next story.” The corner of her mouth curls up into a smirk.

So Piper’s a reporter? _Great_.

“Alright.” Lee shrugs. Although it’s mostly for Piper’s benefit because she doesn’t actually have any intention of going there. She hasn’t had the best relationship with reporters in the past.

Lee follows Piper into the city. The first thing she lays eyes on is a big fucking sign on the left. It’s sitting on top of the husk of a trailer, which itself has had an extension welded onto it. One side of the trailer is open to the elements and has a child, a little girl, out in front advertising a newspaper. The sign reads ‘Publick Occurances’. It must be the name of Piper’s paper. 

On the right there’s a simple little building constructed out of metal plates like the rest of the city, with one large plate still bearing some logo of…

Wait. That logo is actually an original sign. It reads ‘All Faiths Chapel’. Lee gives a little hum at the thought of it. And, well, the building itself has the simplicity for it. She decides to check it out on her way out of the city.

In front of her are multiple sets of stairs leading into what used to be the baseball field. The pass through some dead shrubbery to end in a dirt path paved with old wooden pallets. And as Lee looks further and further away, she sees that yes, the entire city is paved in wood. Especially the marketplace in the center of the diamond.

Walking forward, Lee reaches the bottom in time to catch Piper having a chat with the kid. She ignores them as she continues on to the marketplace only to stop next to a butcher’s stand. Just this little bit of movement has brought her in range of another populated settlement, and the added pressure of another fifty or so minds has brought her to the threshold of pain. There is now a dull ache pulsing in the center of her head. 

While the ache is far from slowing her down, Lee figures that it’s best to nip this problem in the bud. Screwing her eyes shut, she pictures a large wall of panels in her mind. She reaches out for the one directly in front of her as she chooses which part of her brain she’s trying to access. The panel in question reshapes itself so that it contains a meter, a lever, and a set of buttons. She reaches out to a button labeled “Mind-RADAR” and taps it to set the meter. The needle immediately jumps to the right edge as the backlight flashes on and off. 

The two short flashes are a code indicating that the meter’s capacity to measure has been exceeded. Lee taps the button next to the lever and holds her breath. It can either flash another error code or fail to light up entirely, but it does neither. After a tense moment, the button lights up to show all clear as the lever moves to the top on its own. Okay, good. Very good. Once there, Lee tries to shift it.

But it doesn’t budge.

She tries again to double check. Same result. While she could just brute-force it, there’s something else that Lee wants to check. She opens her eyes in the real world as she pictures a net being cast out of her head. In the span of a blink, lines of light appear in the sky, moving outward and away from Diamond City fast as a galloping horse. Which means that the control panel in her mind is still trying to catch up to the full extent of her range. 

Lee wipes her hand on her face. Damn. What the fuck is wrong with her? Her heart kicks into high gear. Was it something to do with being put on ice in that damn vault, or was this always happening, and she just didn’t notice?

For once Curiosity, the one who does all the thinking, doesn’t have an answer for her. Fuck.

This problem needs fixing, but for that she needs privacy. She needs a room because people tend to ask questions when they come across somebody with their eyes screwed shut like they’re battling some kind of headache. She can probably ask this Nick person, when she finds him. But first, she’s got business in town.

With her mind struggling under its current load, and her internal control structures too weak to handle her powers, thought-intensive tasks like offloading loot from the corvega plant or conducting official business is out of the question. Knowing this makes her to-do list simple: find Nick, find a room.

Just then, a familiar voice butts in. “Hey, Blue. You doing alright?”

Lee turns her head to find Piper staring at her with concerned eyes. Instead of trying to fib her way out of this, Lee opts to work with the idea that she’s got a headache.

She wipes her face down with her hand and speaks. “Must not’ve gotten sleep last night.”

Piper pops a brow into her hairline in response. “Yeah, that’ll do it. And all kinds of other things besides. You uh, wanna sit down?” She points to a spot just behind Lee.

Lee follows Piper’s finger to see the bench just behind her ass. “Sure.” she shrugs.

In the center of the bench lies a booklet titled _The Synthetic Truth_. Lee grabs it. Inside, the booklet contains a well-written, engaging anecdote involving no less than the likes of Mayor McDonough. It follows by describing an incident in which some non-human entity, called a _synth_ by the booklet, went on a sudden rampage. Between that and going back to McDonough having a bowl of noodles, there’s a mention of some _Institute_. 

Lee makes a note in her mind to start gathering information on that group, but for now she puts them down as the Big Bad on everybody’s mind. She searches the booklet for the author’s name.

Piper Wright. Huh.

Speaking of the devil, Piper’s just about to shut the door to her office. Maybe Lee should pay her a visit after all. Might be illuminating.

“Piper!” Lee calls. The door stops and a head pops out. Lee gets up and closes the distance between them. “Piper. I’m,” Lee swallows partly out of tense nerves but also partly for effect, “You were right. I am pretty new in town. Think I can ask you a couple questions?” She holds up the booklet for emphasis.

Piper’s smiles. “Sure. Come on in.”


	4. Chapter 4

_Publick Occurences_

The office is more of a reception area that combines work space with space to cook and do laundry. There’s maybe five feet of space between where Lee stands just inside the door, and the door to the trailer-husk-area on her left. On the right there’s a curtain to comprise a ‘wall’ of sorts, probably leading into a more private section of their home. On Lee’s side of it, the reception area is a rectangular box with a couch along the near wall, a coffee table in the center, and a chair next to the table. Like the pathways outside, the floor is largely comprised of wooden pallets. Between the couch and the opposite wall is about enough space to fit two cars, if the drivers park them so that the doors will touch. A little too much space for an interview, in Lee’s own opinion, but at least Piper had the right idea in choosing a one-person seat.

Piper gestures towards the chair as she takes a seat on the couch.

“So, _Blue_ ,” Piper asks, “can I have your name?”

This time, Piper’s nickname catches the attention of Curiosity.

As she picks up the surprisingly light chair, Lee asks a question. “You, uh, trying to tell me something?”

Piper’s eyes narrow slightly. “Interesting you caught that, seeing as you’re from a _vault_.” She nods to herself, like she just threw out that sentence to try it on Lee for size. “Yeah, you may not be wearing the blue jumpsuit but the Pip-Boy and the fish-out-of-water look? Dead giveaways.”

An ominous rumbling echoes from the back of Lee’s mind. Like she thought, Piper _did_ see right through her. With her brain locked down by cognitive overload, the best, most rational, option would be for Lee to make a speedy yet graceful exit. 

Too bad Lee isn’t in a mood to be rational.

“I’m afraid I have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.” Lee shoots back. “Hell, for a moment I thought you’d somehow stalked me all the way from home.”

Piper’s brows furrow as her nose scrunches up in confusion. “Uhh, no?” The face goes away as she leans forward. “I mean, where even _is_ home for you?”

Lee swallows back the real answer: Vicksburg, Mississippi. Or the Gulf Commonwealth, as it became shortly before the end.

“The gulf.” Lee responds. She doesn’t want to give a name because she’s sure that her old hometown is a pile of rubble by now, and she couldn’t come up with a fake name if she tried.

Piper nods. “Uh-huh. And how was I supposed to follow you from there?”

Lee starts to respond, then stops. Does Piper actually know geography beyond the greater Boston area?

She decides to ask. “Do you actually know where that is?”

Piper folds her hands into a mesh as the corner of her mouth quirks into an easy smirk. “Yes actually. What I don’t know is what a body of water has to do with... _everything_.”

So the answer is not quite, then. Okay. Lee can work with this. To a point, at least.

“Oh nothing much, really.” Lee responds. “I just think you’re missing the part where I got this,” she points to the computing device on her left arm, “from my parents.” 

Piper quirks a single brow this time. “Uh-huh. And the fish-out-of-water look?” She seems distinctly unimpressed, not least because of the way she crosses her arms.

“Well, the way things are here don’t apply everywhere.” Lee responds.

“But you come from the gulf?” Piper asks. As she waits for Lee’s answer, the corner of her mouth curves into a large smirk.

It takes a moment for Lee to grasp what she’s getting at, but when she does her heart drops all the way down to her gut.

Given that her appearance and equipment are as much a part of her story as what she just told Piper, Lee’s guns and bags coupled with her relative lack of weathering must contradict the details she gave. If anything, she’d still have plenty of opportunity to grapple with the worst any part of the American wasteland has to offer in about four months of travel by foot. And that’s assuming she made a beeline for Boston, because if she’d stopped to take on work along the way? She’d be looking at years instead of months.

At that point, it’d be easier to just outright say that she came from a vault. At least then she could shorten the timeframe to a couple of weeks to explain how she got her kit.

But there ain’t no way in hell that she’s just gonna give Piper the truth. Lee sighs. Not before she’s certain she can trust Piper as a friend.

Speaking of whom, Piper leans back on the couch.

“Why don’t you sit down, so we can talk?” she asks Lee.

Lee keeps her voice low and calm as she responds. “I think I’ll stand, thank you very much.”

Piper quirks a brow. “Alright. So you already know my name, but what’s yours?” The close knit of her brows suggests she already knows how Lee will respond, but she leaves the question open.

“None of your business.” Lee hisses. She braces herself when Piper’s brows set themselves into a firm line, expecting Piper to dig in and lay siege on her.

Piper doesn’t disappoint. “Come on, Blue. What’s your name?” Her brows knit themselves into a concerned line.

Lee glares at Piper in response. 

She lets the silence stretch out into a whole minute before Piper fills it. “You realize that this isn’t actually an interview, right?”

Lee blinks. “Wait, what?”

Piper sighs. “If I pushed _that_ hard nobody would talk to me.” She works her throat as she bites back a sentence. “I _always_ make sure my interviewees know what’s going on first.”

So that’s it then. Lee sighs. While on the one hand she severely underestimated Piper, on the other she just declared that she is going to have an interview with Lee. So that’s a thing she’ll need to step around.

“Okay.” Piper nods to herself, as though confirming a conclusion in her mind. “Okay then. So. Can I have your name?”

Lee thinks for a moment, then decides to give Piper one of her names. “Lee.”

“Alright Lee. What did you want to know?” Piper asks.

Sighing, Lee tosses the booklet into Piper’s lap. “What do you know about the Institute?”

Piper catches it in her hands, and answers. “I know that they’re a group, but that’s about it. They’re the boogeyman of the commonwealth, hiding God knows where, kidnapping and replacing people for reasons only they’re aware of. They’re pretty scary.”

Lee nods. “Sounds like.” A wave of thoughts hit her mind head on. She winces. “You been keeping a tally of who got whacked?”

Once again, Piper quirks a brow. “No?”

Lee grimaces. “A great way to gather intel is to keep a running log of all confirmed activity. The data will hint not only at what they’re doing, but also at what they want.”

Piper blinks. “Really?”

Lee nods, and immediately regrets the movement. “Yep.”

Piper grasps her chin between her thumb and forefinger, and stares at nothing in particular. “Huh.” Putting her hand down, her eyes refocus onto Lee. “Say, how about an interview? You give me your full story, and a couple tips on what the Institute might be doing.”

“Not this time.” Lee answers. “Gotta take care of this headache and maybe figure out where Nick Valentine is.”

“That’s it?” PIper asks, cocking her head.

“Sure. Unless you also happen to know where I can get a room.” Lee answers.

“You can get a room at the Dugout Inn,” Piper responds, “Valentine is in the same alleyway. Go back outside and go around the market. If you see the purifier or DC Radio, you’ve gone too far.” 

Like a dumbass, Lee nods again and regrets the movement. Again.

That’s when she feels a fluttering in her chest. Her hand shoots up to check it, and tells her something entirely different from what her brain is telling her: that her heartbeat is not her own. _Fuck_ but she needs to get out of her _now_. 

“Hey.” Piper calls to her, “you feeling alright?” 

A wave of pain rolls over Lee’s mind. “No. Yes. I mean…” She grasps her head in an effort to stem the tide as she grunts. “Can’t think.”

Piper sits up. “I see. Well, I hope you feel better.” She offers a hand.

“Thanks.” Lee whispers. She shakes Piper’s hand. 

* * *

_Dugout Inn_

Valentine’s office was closed today. Lee leans her head back against the wall. His clerk expects him to return tomorrow, but in the meantime she’s shit out of luck.

Good.

The sky had gone yellow-red by the time she left the office of the Valentine Detective Agency, and while she might be able to hoof it on back to Oberland Station, they wouldn’t have a bed for her to use. In the end, getting a room at the Dugout would let her work on her growing mind problem. At least in part.

If Lee’s being honest with herself, and she normally is, then she’s easily looking at a full rebuild of the countless systems she has put into her mind over the years. Putting aside the emotional reaction to tearing down five years of work, one night is not nearly enough time to redo everything. So she won’t.

Tonight, the plan is to withdraw the excess energy powering her systems and figure out what do do with it. Eyes shut, Lee envisions herself inside a round chamber. It’s barren of all decoration, and the walls extend up far beyond her ability to see. She inserts a hole into the nearest section of wall, and moves herself to it. 

What she’s about to do, Lee could never accomplish in the real world. But because she’s in her own mind, Lee sticks her arm into the hole. As she weaves her hand around systems she can vaguely place the location of, she imagines a hose in her hand that extends all the way back into the chamber. Before long she can feel the smooth, rubbery texture of the surface of the hose in her hand. 

Lee continues stretching, reaching, and weaving her hand through her mind until she hits something. Her hand, and the hose, plunge into a thick, gelatinous substance that sends electric bolts rippling through them. She pulls away from the extended metaphor, so that now she’s looking into the chamber from the outside rather than positioning the hose from the inside. The horizon on all sides is a bright, neon shade of pink. Much brighter than Lee’s ever seen it. Fuck.

To kick off the action, Lee envisions a suction force drawing the substance through the hose as she turns the cylinder upside down so that the hole is now near the top. The substance starts dripping in. Slowly. 

With her concept proven, Lee enlarges the hose to fit the hole. The new hose quickly floods the cylinder, but it doesn’t seem to put a dent in the horizon. If she’s going to go back to the way her powers worked before, Lee’s going to need to snuff out that light. Preferably by drawing it into a pool, hence the cylinder.

So she makes it bigger. What was previously the relative size of a test tube from her high school chem class grows to about the size of an oil drum. She makes the hole a bit bigger, to allow more juice to flow in.

The drum fills up in a few minutes. 42 Gallons. Or it would be if it were real. Here in her mind, real is not quite as relevant as she’s used to it being. But when she wants a big drum, Lee gets a big drum. And now that it’s full, she takes a look around.

The light is definitely dimmer since she started. Seeing it for her self buoys her spirits. This _thing_ that she becomes can be controlled, can be managed, can be… _helpful_. But only with proper care and a watchful eye. Something she intends to fix, now that she doesn’t need to worry about the twatmuffins in DC.

Or maybe she does, and she just doesn’t know it, yet.

No, _focus_.

While Lee can make the drum even bigger, to hold _all_ the light inside, the more sensible choice is to use another drum. At least in her mind. Situational pun not intended.

She creates a new drum to replace the old one, which moves to rest at her side. And when the new drum fills up, she replaces it with another new drum. All in all, she fills up three drums and is halfway up a fourth drum when the light on the horizon goes out entirely. To complete the construction of her new pool, Lee connects the drums to each other and leaves the hose in place.

Turning her attention back to the real world, Lee checks around herself for thoughts and is met with blissful silence. In a few hours, she’ll have enough juice to go back to her old range of about 300 meters. 

Finally.

For the first time since waking up, Lee relaxes without the need to make her own fun on the battlefield. She checks the Pip-Boy for the time. Three A.M. She should be out cold right now. Fuck. Curiosity suggests that maybe that excess juice is affecting her like it did in the old days, by energizing her in various weird-ass ways. Well, it’d be simple enough to check. On the right side of the Pip-Boy’s display, beneath the radio dial, is a switch for the display backlight. Lee turns it off.

Surprise, surprise. Her eyes are fucking _glowing_. Fuck. She wipes a hand down her face, her heart skipping into overdrive. Fear jolly-skips the fuck around her shoulders, shouting into her ears. It tells her all the things she hates about herself. That she’s a freak, a monster, an ungodly abomination. She sits there a moment, stupefied by the overt display of the very thing that makes her not human. This is it, isn’t it? She’s going to be outed, then driven out of town by a fucking lynch mob, or some shit. Or—

Drawing on her new juice pool, one of Lee’s older systems kicks in to relieve the anxiety and panic. Her mind clears up as Fear gets sucked back into the hell bucket, where she keeps all her fears and traumas. Once she’s ready, Lee then reaches for a system meant to control how her powers get expressed outwardly. A twist of the dial here, and another pull of a lever, and the glow fades away. Okay. Good. She might have to start wearing sunglasses, but at least having lavender eyes someone could recognize from a mile away is better than having them glow like nightlights. 

Last but not least, she needs to go to sleep. But not before she opens the hell bucket.

Years ago—

Fuck. It’s more than just years now, isn’t it? It’s twenty-two-fucking-eighty-seven now. Double fuck.

Centuries and a lifetime ago, Lee used to think that she could bottle up all her hurts and her traumas thanks to her powers. It wasn’t until she nearly took a knife to her husband Dutch that she had to admit she was wrong. Instead of going away, her shit grew steadily worse and worse until it was starting to eat her mind alive. _Fear is the mind-killer_ , Lee dimly remembers reading, and so it was, and is.

Speaking of Dutch, thank God for that man. If that dork hadn’t dragged her ass into the therapist’s office… Lee doesn’t want to think about the consequences. But from then on, she made a resolution: every night, before bed, Lee opens the hell bucket and allows whatever emotional shit still contained within to sweep her away. She has to. She’s— She’s _decades_ late to the process of sorting her shit, and she knows now that it’s not going away.

Just— it hurts. So much.

Lee feels her makeshift mind-walls go up reflexively. As if they’re reacting to what’s about to come. Well, too bad this threat isn’t coming from the outside.

First, she takes off her shoes and her socks, exposing her feet to the elements. Next, she plants her feet and her hands on the mattress in the room. Then, she presses another old system, one meant to help her get sleep whenever she went to bed with juice to spare, back into service. Finally, she lifts the lid and shuts her eyes while all her old hells come rushing out.

She is immediately swept up in a torrent of old emotional pains, not all of them hers, but tonight the one on her mind is Dutch.

_Laughter, deep and rumbling. Echoes in the voice of the finest bass ever produced by Chester Nimitz High School of Carmel, Indiana. Passes through clean shaven lips framed by the stubble of what promises to be the dorkiest beard she has ever had the fortune to lay eyes on. She breathes in deeply, taking in his scent as she swears that her heart will never be this full again. It’s almost enough to make a girl think that maybe there is a god in heaven. And that maybe he doesn’t actually hate her guts._

_She’d seen pictures of galaxies once. Never thought about them again until she looked into his eyes. Or maybe that was he into hers. Fuck her powers for absorbing memories like a dry sponge in water._

Mercifully, the flashbacks leave as quickly as they came, and at last Lee falls asleep exhausted. 

* * *

_Dawn_

The Pip-Boy’s alarm drills a hole in her skull as it goes off. One of her hands runs itself along the edge of the display, looking for a button to shut it off. When it finds nothing, she heaves her eyes open to take a closer look. 

Oh. Of course. It’s a fucking menu option. Fuck Vault-Tec.

Lee lies on the mattress a moment, not quite ready to get up. About a week after she initially developed sleeping problems in college, she put her extracurricular studies in neuroscience on hold to beef up on how the body handles sleep. Using her gained knowledge, she built a sleep regulator fueled by the same juice that fuels her powers. It’s biggest problem, however, lay in the fact that it could and would destroy her natural sleep regulation if she used it for too long. 

Last time, she solved the problem by applying every last ounce she could space to her existing systems, but now it seems that her power has increased beyond their ability to handle. She shivers. Her use of _power_ in that last sentence reminds her why she insisted on stopping in the first place. Lee clutches her head in her hands.

Focus. Need to focus.

Lee sits up, wiping her hands on her face as she disengages her alternate sleep regulator. Tonight, she’ll have to find a use for all the excess energy she isn’t putting towards her systems anymore. Right now, though, she’s got an appointment to keep.


End file.
